Martha Dean is running for Attorney General of Connecticut
as a Republican. But her view of states' rights suggests she'd be more at home
representing the old Confederacy. According
to Dean, when states don't like a Supreme Court decision — the final constitutional
step in settling legal disputes — they can simply ignore the parts they don't
like:

Dean, who is facing off against Democrat George Jepsen in a race to
become Connecticut's first new attorney general in 20 years, presented a
vigorous defense Wednesday of the doctrine of "nullification," which
holds that states can reject federal laws when they believe that Washington has no authority under the U.S. Constitution to enforce them.

"This is a tool that has
existed," Dean said in a phone interview. "It is a tool that isn't
often used. It isn't often needed."

But in cases in which she
believes the federal government has surpassed the limitations imposed by the
Tenth Amendment to the Constitution - which reserves powers not granted to the
federal government to the individual states themselves - Dean said she supports efforts by Connecticut and other states to
nullify federal law.

While Dean said her position is
controversial only to "the left," nullification, also referred to as
"interposition," is extremely controversial. It has been invoked by
defenders of states' rights, for instance, in some of the most intense
rebellions against federal authority, most notably during the run-up to the
Civil War and the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

That's crazy enough on its own. Dean may not be arguing for
an economy based on slave labor, but she is
arguing — vigorously — that the legal doctrine used by slave states to defend
the practice (thus starting the Civil War) is a valid and useful "tool" in our
legal system. As the Constitutional
Accountability Center
pointed out last week, she's flatly wrong:

Actually, no such "tool"
exists. The Constitution's Supremacy Clause, found in Article VI, makes
the Constitution and federal laws enacted pursuant to it the supreme law of the
land - laws that all states must therefore obey. And Article III of
the Constitution makes the Supreme Court, not the states or individual state
officials, the final arbiter of whether a federal law is or is not
unconstitutional. It is disturbing
that Dean, seeking office as a state's chief lawyer, said in the interview that
she does not "accept" that the Supreme Court has this authority. Dean
would do well to go back to her law school texts and remind herself of Chief
Justice John Marshall's famous declaration, made more than 200 years ago, that
"It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say
what the law is." Simply put, Dean's claim that states have the power to
nullify federal law conflicts with the text of the Constitution.

Dean took exception to CAC's rebuke, and picked a strange
ally to defend her outlandish legal philosophy. In a comment on the CAC post,
Dean quoted secessionist writer Dr. Tom Woods' response to the CAC analysis. Woods, who holds a PhD in history from Columbia University, called the post a "fifth-grade research paper" and accused its author of
"getting the history exactly backwards!" In closing, Woods made that most insidious of arguments:
"Ever read Hitler's views of states' rights? I'll give you a hint: he doesn't
side with me." Right! Because anybody who thinks the Constitution lays out a
clear system for resolving legal disputes that ultimately holds Supreme Court
decisions to be the law of the land is pining for the good ol' days of Nazi
Germany.

Woods, for his part, pines merely for the good ol' days of
the antebellum American south. According to the conservative Claremont
Institute, Woods' book of American history "is just more wheezy
propaganda from the old Confederacy," and "Woods is a founding member of
the League of the South, which officially declares: 'The people of the South
must come to understand that they indeed are a 'nation'' and may resort to secession
if their demands are not met."

In another post
today, CAC calls attention to another conservative dismissal of Woods'
worldview:

Libertarian author Cathy Young also
shredded Woods' book in Reason Magazine, saying:

Much of the
book's first half is an apologia for the antebellum South and its cause in the
War Between the States (Woods' preferred term).

...

If you're wondering whether there's a
larger context for Woods' pleading, there is. Born and raised in the North,
Woods is a co-founder of the League of the South, a neo-Confederate group, and
has written frequently for its magazine The Southern Patriot.

In a 1997
article titled "Christendom's Last Stand," Woods proclaims the Confederacy's
defeat "the real watershed from which we can trace many of the destructive
trends that continue to ravage our civilization today."

If these are the friends Martha Dean turns to for covering
fire in the "battle" over nullification — a battle her side lost two centuries
ago — then she's got no business representing the Nutmeg State
in a court of law. And if these are the candidates the GOP recruits for New
England campaigns, who
are the
Republican champions
in so-called
"Real America"?

Updated 10/21/10 to reflect Dr. Woods' credentials: a bachelor's in history from Harvard, and postgraduate degrees including a PhD in history from Columbia University.